The Wish Palace directed and adapted by Eva Kaufman, based on a play by Kate McNamara. Spandex Theatre at The Street Theatre Studio September 10-14, 7.30pm.
Spandex is new and its members young, heading out from college drama to explore the world through theatre. Eva Kaufman's intentions are sincere and this first production shows intelligence. But the script she chose is flawed. The result is a tension of the wrong kind between McNamara's dated and rather pretentious attempt to present heroin addiction as artistic expression and Kaufman's desire to show something more realistic about human capacity for self-delusion.
The group is entirely amateur, but one actor, Lara Lightfoot, had both the strength and sensitivity needed for these roles. Set in a psychiatric ward, Lightfoot's Julia discharges herself, perhaps now capable of coping outside, after the suicide of the heroin addict Bone (Max Barker) and the collapse into a vegetable state of Chat (Lydia Connell) from shock therapy. The parallels with Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest were unavoidable and unfortunate, especially in the nurse's character (Sophie Rutzou).
What Kaufman tried to do was to find a theatrical format or genre to allow issues about using drugs and psychiatric treatment to be brought to our attention, but the melodrama - especially of the writer/addict/depressive Bone - could only lead to a kind of neo-Romanticism. Maybe Chekov could have written what she needed, but, being young, Kaufman perhaps saw more depth and importance in the script than was really there to work on. This also meant that "experimental" features like the appearance of a live string instrument for one scene, or the continuous mime of the conventional wife in another, seemed disconnected from the rest of the action rather than enhancing its meaning.
For Spandex to develop, Kaufman will need stronger material, but this also means training for herself and her actors to match.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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